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Real friends share their Tinder matches.

Madeline (aka The Woman Invisible) and I are friends. We met through our blogs, have met in person, text regularly, and talk on the phone in times of need.

But you know how to really know when a straight same-sex friend is a true friend? When they pass off a Tinder match to you. On a recent Tinder binge, she was matched with a very hot guy who was visiting her city. She didn’t know he wasn’t from there at first. She didn’t end up hooking up with him, because they couldn’t quite make it work. Not for lack of trying.

Turns out, he lives in my city.

On the weekend, she sent me Tinder man’s photo. And his requisite cock shot. It made me laugh because it was the first one I’d received (even via someone else) in several months. I think the crazy Italian was the last one. She offered to connect the two of us but said he was probably a player and just looking for sex.

A random hookup was not exactly what I am looking for, but since being single, I’ve been living my life taking coincidences and opportunities seriously.

I sent her a face pic to send to him. She passed it on to him along with my mobile number.

He texted me shortly afterwards. I stared at the text – which referenced he thought I might be “up for some fun” – and debated for a while whether, and how, to respond. I thought – why not – and responded neutrally.

We texted a bit back and forth and he asked whether I wanted to meet. We were both free on Wednesday night.

Seated at the bar together, we had drinks at a pub close to my office. He’s perfectly tall (6’3″), handsome, amazing eyes, and a rock solid muscular body. Madeline knows how to pick ’em, that’s for sure.

I had low expectations, but we actually had a great and spirited conversation that lasted a couple of hours. There was definitely a spark. And another reminder of how small the world is – he and I were at the same university at the same time, and even more crazy, he was a sports trainer to one of my roommates’ girlfriends.

I wondered whether he was interested, but stopped wondering when he turned fully to face me and put his hand on my inner thigh. He’s never been married, so I asked him what his issue was. He said “fear of commitment”. While he’s had three long term relationships, he’s broken them all off before they got to an engagement. I asked him whether he had a “stable of women”. Surprised by my bluntness, he answered honestly: “yes”. Laughing, I asked if he’d been asked that before, and he said no.

I asked him why he felt the need to have a stable, and (paraphrasing), it was because it keeps things light. He sees them once a week. So I asked him whether he’d ever been with someone who was truly insatiable.

Nope.

So I lightly explained that once a week wasn’t enough for me. He asked how much was. I said twice a day, but I knew it wasn’t feasible.

I’ve discovered when I have low expectations, and feel completely disconnected, I have no issue being brutally honest with someone. I told him I’d just come out of a relationship, and didn’t like liars or the games that men play. That I needed a good and regular communicator. That I wasn’t looking to get married or have children (I couldn’t, anyway), but I also didn’t like wasting my time searching for lovers who ended up being unsatisfying. That I wanted to date – meaning go out and do things – and I found it was a lost art for people who aren’t looking for serious relationships.

And finally, that I wasn’t sure, honestly, if I wanted to be part of a stable. I also told him I wasn’t online anywhere and wasn’t actively looking. That I had reservations about meeting him – because he seemed to be a player – but didn’t really believe in coincidences and figured I had nothing to lose.

After expressing his interest in me, and a very open conversation about porn, young and hot bodies versus knowledge and pleasure, sexual predilections (was I submissive? Yes) and some of my abilities (squirting, multi orgasmic, etc), and his hand roaming fully up my skirt (finding an oh-so-sexy barricade of pantyhose), he asked me what I was doing the next night. I have a dinner with a girlfriend. He has an early evening event.

He suggested perhaps the next night he could come over to my place and fuck me. I said “I have to kiss you before I’m going to decide to have sex with you”. He paid the bill, saying he had to go because he had work he had to do (although I’m 99% sure it was a date), led me by the hand out of the restaurant, put me up against the wall, put his body firmly against mine, and kissed me.

I felt…

Not much.

It was a good kiss, but not like Ariel, NIM, The Comedian, or Tony. His body is rock hard and perfect, and his hands did the right things, and my body had a minimal response, but…

There was none of the liquid fire I felt the first time Tony touched my wrist. I did not go weak in the knees, or become an instant puddle.

When he said “I think you are going to be a lot of fun, I can’t wait to fuck you”, I felt nothing. No delicious shiver down my body.

We parted ways and I walked down the stairs to get to the train. Alone, I stood at the bottom of the stairs, about to burst into tears. I miss Tony so much. This guy isn’t Tony.

Chemistry is an elusive thing. While there is definitely a physical component, I know much of it is mental. But I’ve been a puddle with men I knew just wanted sex. I’ve fucked men when I’ve been grieving. But I’ve not felt so damn disconnected before. I’m not sure what it was with Mr Tinder. Perhaps a lack of kindness, tenderness, or a belief his attraction to me lacked real depth (yes, he thinks I’m hot, yes, we had a great conversation… but is that enough?) More likely, it has nothing to do with him at all.

I could care less if I hear from him today. If he reaches out I might have him over, to see how I feel.

But right now, I just feel sad. I miss Tony. The bar last night was playing a game with his favorite sports team. It took all the willpower I had not to text him. I’ve made a promise to a friend to not contact him until at least June 5. Of course, I will respond if he contacts me. But I will be surprised if he does.

Thank you Anisa!! Yes, I definitely don’t want to just try to fill a hole with someone else. I figured not going back online would do the trick… but I guess I found a loophole when a friend finds Tinder potentials for me 😉

I had this same experience after Adam…well not with tinder, but with not feeling anything for men I would have before. Everyone I met just plain wasn’t him. We had such a chemistry that letting go of it was difficult and still a struggle. I was just sad that none of them were him. Granted out in Podunk Kansas there is an extreme lack of eligible bachelors so that was part of the problem. (Hopefully not for long if I can get moved! New opportunities and new men await me!) You are very newly out of your relationship with Tony, so it is to be expected but keep your mind open to new possibilities.

Oh Ann, you may not be ready to get back on the saddle yet. I am glad you are listening to your emotional cues. I find my body sometimes wanting to relieve my grief through sex, but my emotions won’t let me. It’s bad enough to fall into a puddle of tears with your husband mid-intercourse…I can’t imagine having it happen with someone who is basically a stranger. Good luck, Hun!

I think you actually NEED to be alone for a while. Focus on you. There is great freedom and power in knowing you can be alone and be ok with it. I honestly think you need a break from men… Yes I said it!
I get a high sex drive, God knows I have one too! But that’s what fingers, toys and porn is for!
Think about it Annie?
Sending you love.
Kat x

I liked this but I have a question for you: Do you really believe that chemistry just happens spontaneously? Do you really expect it to always work like that? Oops… that was two questions! And you know there’s a reason why I’m asking… I hope. Oh, and do you think it’s really all that unusual that you didn’t feel the fire with this guy when you’ve still got a bad case of Tony-on-the-brain? That you didn’t feel it doesn’t surprise me at all… and I just asked you three questions.

We had mental chemistry and I find I know whether it’s there with someone, very quickly. It’s the banter, intelligence, the light in their eyes, humor, that kind of thing.

I don’t expect to have perfect physical encounters with someone at first. Not at all. But even in the ones that have been less than perfect, I know how I feel when they touch me – and there are some with whom my reaction is instant and a very strong connection.

And no, I didn’t think it was unusual at all…but it took me by surprise a little bit.

At least how I define chemistry, it doesn’t take time…it’s either there or it’s not. Physical compatibility can develop over time, for sure. I don’t expect instant perfection in how someone kisses me, for example.

He’s not Tony. That’s the problem. Try to keep your June 5th promise, but remember if you give in and contact him before then, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. Not even close. I know it’s hard to do, I had a best friend who would give me a goal before sleeping with someone. I don’t remember what it was, 3 dates or 3 months, something like that….

Ah well… yes, he obviously isn’t Tony. Plus he may make you feel a bit too much like he’s in it just for the fuck, and you’re looking more for… more :-/
Because you just ha more and would have wanted even more :-/
Oh, life’s messed up sometimes, isn’t it?
Hugs my friend!
XO

This is how I feel about *most* men I meet: “He’s perfectly nice, just… ‘eh'”. I’m notoriously hard to engage.

On the up side, it makes it no challenge at all for me to pass on men who don’t work for me. On the down side, it means I really do have to wait for that elusive .0001% to smack me upside the head because trying to raise even a modicum of pretend-interest in an ‘eh’-guy is not worth my time or trouble.

Enough about me though: your reaction is NORMAL, woman. You’re hung up on some other guy. You already know that you can’t just slot other pieces into that space. I think you’re used to slotting ‘eh’ guys into ‘eh’ spaces, but now you have a ‘Tony-sized’ space, and you can’t slot ‘eh’ into that. Give yourself a break to do some healing.

Thanks hon, it’s quite true. I like the analogy of a Tony sized space. So true. With each good experience I have, with different men, it gets harder to accept anything less. Like Johnny’s excellent communication, and the compatibility of Tony, etcetera.

I’m giving myself a mental break for sure. Might dabble with some known entities, but will play that by ear. Definitely don’t want to take risks with my heart.

Chemistry, even the instant kind, takes time. Chemistry can be developed but in a time where we’re all about instant gratification, if we don’t feel the fire with someone right away, well, it must not be meant for us to engage with them. I used to understand chemistry the way you do… then I got schooled big time. One of the things I learned that will make chemistry not happen instantly is when someone is “pining” for someone else or otherwise romantically distracted so while I’ll say that on your date, you left with your virtue intact – always a good thing – if you had really wanted to get jiggy with the dude, you could have made your own chemistry by tapping into your need to be made love to.

I’m not busting your butt, Ann – just pointing something out to ya that makes me scratch my head about most women. Y’all have these needs but when y’all fail to pull the trigger, that lack of chemistry is the first “excuse” that comes up. I’ve asked women this: “If you wanted to do a little something with that guy, do you always need to feel something that, by its very nature, isn’t as spontaneous as people believe it to be?”

Then I said to one woman, “You know, it’s a wonder some of y’all ever get laid at all since you’re content to sit and wait for a guy you might not know a whole lot about to just kinda sweep you off your sexual feet in an instant – and that doesn’t always happen even though y’all seem to always expect it to happen – what’s up with that?”

Some of the answers I’ve gotten, well, I’m not gonna say they didn’t make sense; a lot of those women said, “I wanted to, but he didn’t give me that feeling I was looking for…” and I’ve asked, “Why are you depending on someone else to make you feel the way you want to feel in that moment? Why can’t you light your own fire so you can make him cry out for his momma?”

I dare say, however, that even if you had lit your own fire with this guy and turned him out, you might not have had a good time with a bad case of Tony-on-the-brain; the fact that you compared your feelings with this guy to the way you felt when Tony first touched you, at least to me, pretty much killed whatever you might have had on your mind while he was all up in your personal space.

Sometimes, we’re our own worst enemies and even though we can find good and logical reasons for not taking someone to bed – and even at the spur of the moment – too many of us will just sit and wait to feel something that may not appear right at that moment and, I think apparently, we don’t know how to jump-start our own motors. I’m not saying you messed up by not jumping this guy’s bone but I find it curious that you were waiting to feel something that some people never feel with each other right away. We tell ourselves that it’s either there or it isn’t – that’s actually not a good way to look at chemistry because it assumes that it can’t be invoked either right then and there or over a period of time… because it can be… IF that’s what you really wanted to do.

Maybe you wanted to screw this guy, maybe you didn’t but, um, chemistry didn’t have anything to do with it not happening because if this guy was doing all the right things and you felt nothing, it wasn’t the lack of chemistry – your mind just wasn’t in the right place (it was in Tonyville).

See? Not misguided at all but having spent all this time reading about your desires and needs, I just wondered what pulled you up short with this handsome stranger or what it was that poured ice water on your lusty hotness and, yeah, you just had to know I was gonna say something and even kinda laugh at you a little… but in a good way.

I agree that I hear the same thing from women and it confuses me as well. Absolutely, sometimes these things take time.

However, when it comes to this date, there was no option for anything else to happen. We agreed to meet for a drink, and he had to leave. So it wasn’t that I refused to do anything more with him based on that interaction.

The other thing, and perhaps it wasn’t clear from my post, was that I *was* in the moment with him. When he touched me at the bar, I didn’t immediately think of Tony and compare the two of them. It was only after my very different response to his kiss and his touch that I did my comparing.

In most other cases, I’ve been able to “light my own fire”, as you say. It’s not ever really been a problem for me. My motor gets jumpstarted pretty easily, and I’m usually able to get out of my head in physical encounters.

I absolutely agree that it was mostly my own head that caused the different in reaction to him. But there was something about him as well, and how he was with me, which was a turnoff. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but it will come to me.

And you may be pleased to know, or at least intrigued, that I have another post to write about Mr. Tinder. Coming soon.

I am, of course, intrigued; you fascinate me in a few good ways and, nah, I don’t have a problem making you think about some stuff or asking you questions because I’m still a serious student where women are concerned… but I’d never bust your ass in a bad way… but I wouldn’t sugar-coat things that might be important, either.

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